Journalism jobs

Compiled by Alison Agudo, posted Feb. 26, 2011

1. Specific Company Websites: Usually the best way to start a job search! If you have a company in mind that you want to work for, often the best way to find out what job openings they have is to visit their website directly. Most companies have a page called “Work for us” or “Jobs” that you can typically find right on their homepage. This gives you direct access to their availabilities and instructions to how the company wants to receive applications, what they have to offer and often salary and requirement information as well. It’s also the best way to ensure you’re actually contacting the company directly. If they are looking to hire, they will make it very clear how to apply and what qualities they want their applicants to have.

2. Linkedin:This is an online professional network that connects people based upon professional and career-oriented associations. Many companies have profiles on Linked in and often ask applicants to provide their links to their profiles during the application process. Many people see it as a more “serious” type of Facebook and having your resume, skills and responsibilities presented on here is a great way for recruiters to find you too. It is an international website and claims more than half of LinkedIn members are located outside the United States, but if you’re looking to connect with employers in the U.S. there are plenty on here too. It’s also a great way to have former employers or colleagues post recommendations that future employers can easily access. This site is important because of it’s networking capabilities – for journalists this is very important and keeping a rolodex of contacts can be key for sourcing and moving up in your career.

3. Journalism Jobs:From the name of the site you can see that this search site is geared toward journalism jobs and even includes freelancing. By entering the industry, position and location, the site comes up with numerous journalism-related job. This site also has a tab with a list of journalism resources that cover topics such as media training, media salaries, media ethics, career articles and general media links. They also have a way for employers to search uploaded resumes. The list of companies that have use the site is impressive, including ESPN, Time Inc., MSNBC, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reader’s Digest, ABCNews.com, New York Post, public relations agencies, and many more.

4. Monster:This site has joined with “Hot Jobs” so it has a large database to work with for searches. It also has a section for employers to search for employees. They consider themselves a “online recruiter” and encourage you to upload your resume to increase the odds of a company finding you. They have a good job filtering system that allows you to narrow your searches according to industry, category, career level, job type and of course, location. It’s a well organized website that typically shows salary, job description, start date, location and more. Also, if you sign up with them, they save your job searches and keep track of previous jobs that you clicked on so they can recommend similar listings.

5. Freelanced:This website is dedicated to freelance writers and those needing freelance writers. It’s a pretty simple website in terms of function, but does bring up quite a few results and indicates what the jobs pay and even how many people have applied so far. Freelancers can also post their profiles and be featured on the website so employers can easily access them and request jobs if they are interested. Freelance work is hard to come by, so having a site dedicated to a least starting the search is extremely helpful and useful.

6. Career Builder: This site is similar to Monster in it’s features, but doing the same search in each one does bring up different results, so it’s best to try both and see what comes up. They let you pick an industry, keywords and location to begin with but you can always filter it down with their “Narrow Search” option. You can view full job descriptions, save to your account for later, or even email the listing to a friend.

7. Simply Hired: This is a bit different than the other job search engines because it works as a “vertical search engine” meaning it searches other databases and comes up with results from many job search engines and brings them to you in one place. It’s a very straightforward search engine that allows you to filter your searches based on company, date posted, job type, education, experience and more. While many people tend to ignore sponsored ads, this site actually had some decent ones that popped up when I searched for various journalism jobs which created a string of listings elsewhere. If you provide your email address, they will also email you anytime similar searches come up to save you time.

8. Craigslist: Craigslist has been around since 1995 and reportedly receives more than one million new job listings each month. You can browse job listing by city and the narrow down your focus to type of job. In “writing jobs,” for example, Craigslist lets you narrow your search to telecommute, contract, internship, part-time or non-profit that helps to filter out unwanted listings. Of course, be aware that nearly anyone can post a listing on here, so be prudent about whether the listing appears to be legitimate before sending any personal information out.

9. Idealist:This site is a great way to find non-profit jobs, volunteer opportunities, events and other ways to get involved in the community (which looks great on a resume!). It is a well-known site that has gone through some upgrades recently. Their job results come from around the world and you can filter your searches by employment type (full time, part time, etc), education requirements, professional level and salary. You can also post a listing if you’re looking for employees or volunteers and even add your organization to the site.

10. Link up: This website gathers job posting directly from company websites. It’s a newer site that does not contain any personal ads or freelance ads – only postings directly from companies. If a company takes down a job posting, so does Link Up so you’ll never be applying for something that’s outdated. It’s also a good site because the listings are more in depth and detailed than other job search sites because the information comes directly to from the company. In fact, when you click on a result, it redirects you to the company’s career page where the listing originated. In order for a job to be posted on the site, a company has to send their url to Link Up and they will add it. They say they currently have more than 20,759 company sites in their database. When I tried a search on here, it was very accurate in terms of getting only jobs near the zip code I put in, which some other sites seem to ignore that.

11. Go Abroad: The main website is geared towards travelling abroad but they have an extensive study, work, volunteer, or internship abroad section too. You can search for jobs based on country or type of job. Once you make those selections, the site gives you an extensive run down of jobs available with a lot of description and detail on each. It’s also a very handy site because along with job searches, they also have travel tips, flight searches, links to embassy websites, information on travel insurance and more.

12. University of Miami: While the main page of the University website isn’t geared towards job searching for obvious reasons, the school does have a webpage for students through the Toppel Career Center. The site offers resources, advice, programs and other information for students looking for job placement. As students of the university, we should take advantage of what we have handed to us and even speaking to administrators, professors or fellow students on campus can be a great way to find out about jobs. Professors can also tell you about how they started in their field and who they know that may be looking for an intern or employee.